Caroline Anderson - Snowed In For Christmas

Resurrecting a whole shed-load of memories of a time he’d rather forget.

Dragging that up all over again was the last thing he needed, but just moving here had done that, anyway, and there was no way he could leave her outside in a blizzard. And it’d be dark soon. The light was failing already. He’d dig her out and send her on her way. Fast, before it was too late and he was stuck with her.

Letting out a low growl, he picked up his car keys, shrugged on his coat, grabbed a shovel and a tow rope from the coach-house and threw them into the back of the Range Rover he’d bought for just this sort of eventuality. Not that he’d ever expected to be digging Georgia out of a hole.

He headed down the drive, his wipers going flat out to clear the screen, but when he got to the gates and opened them with the remote control, there was no sign of her. Just footprints in the deep snow, heading to the left and vanishing fast in the blizzard.

It was far worse than he’d realised. There were no huge, fat flakes that drifted softly down and stayed where they fell, but tiny crystals of snow driven horizontally by the biting wind, the drifts piling up and making the lane impassable. He wondered where the hell she was. It would have been handy to know just how far along—

And then he saw it, literally yards from the end of his drive, the red tail lights dim through the coating of snow over the lenses. He left the car in the gateway and got out, his boots sinking deep into the powdery drifts as he crunched towards her. No wonder she was stuck, going out in weather like this in that ridiculous little car, but there was no way she’d be going anywhere else in it tonight, he realised. Which meant he would be stuck with her.

Damn.

He felt anger moving in, taking the place of shock. Good. Healthy. Better than the sentimental wallowing he’d been doing last night in that damn four-poster bed—

Bracing himself against the wind, he turned his collar up against the needles of ice and strode over to it, opening the passenger door and stooping down. A blast of warmth and Christmas music swamped him, and carried on the warmth was a lingering scent that he remembered so painfully, excruciatingly well.

It hit him like a kick in the gut, and he slammed the lid on his memories and peered inside.

She was kneeling on the seat looking at something in the back, and as she turned towards him she gave him a tentative smile.

‘Hi. That was quick. I’m really sorry—’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said crisply, trying not to scan her face for changes. ‘Right, let’s get you out of here.’

‘See, Josh?’ she said cheerfully. ‘I told you he was going to help us.’

Josh? She had a Josh who could dig her out?

‘Josh?’ he said coldly, and her smile softened, stabbing him in the gut.

‘My son.’

She had a son?

His heart pounding, he ducked his head in so he could look over the back of the seat—and met wide eyes so familiar they seemed to cut right to his soul.

‘Josh, this is Sebastian. He’s going to get us unstuck.’

He was? Well, of course he was! How could he refuse those liquid green eyes so filled with uncertainty? Poor little kid.

‘Hi, Josh,’ he said softly, because after all it wasn’t the child’s fault they were stuck, and then he finally let himself look at Georgie.

She hadn’t changed at all. She had the same wide, ingenuous eyes as her son, the same soft bow lips, high cheekbones and sweeping brows that had first enchanted him all those years ago. Her wild curls were dark and glossy and beaded with melted snow, and there was a tiny pleat of worry between her brows. And her face was just inches from his, her scent swirling around him in the shelter of the car and making mincemeat of his carefully erected defences.

He hauled his head out of the car and straightened up, sucking in a lungful of freezing air. Better. Slightly. Now if he could just nail those defences back in place again—

‘I’m really sorry,’ she began again, peering up at him, but he shook his head.

‘Don’t. Let’s just get your car out of here and get you inside.’

‘No! I need to get to my parents!’

He let his breath out on a disbelieving huff. ‘Georgie, look at it!’ he said, gesturing at the weather. ‘You’re going nowhere. I don’t even know if I can get your car out, and you’re certainly not taking it anywhere else in the dark.’

‘It’s not dark—’

‘Almost. And we haven’t got your car out yet. Just get in the driver’s seat, keep the engine running and when you feel a tug let the brakes off and reverse gently back as I pull you. And try and steer it so it doesn’t go in the ditch. OK?’

She opened her mouth, shut it again and nodded.

Plenty of time once the car was out to argue with him.

* * *

It took just moments.

The car slithered and slid, and for a second she thought they’d end up in the ditch, but then she felt the tug from behind ease off as they came to rest outside the gates and she put the handbrake on and relaxed her grip on the wheel.

Phase 1 over. Now for Phase 2.

She opened the car door and got out into the blizzard again. He was right there, checking the side of her car that had been wedged against the snowdrift, and he straightened and met her eyes.

‘It looks OK. I don’t think it’s damaged.’

‘Good. That’s a relief. And thanks for helping me—’

‘Don’t thank me,’ he said bluntly. ‘You were blocking the lane, I’ve only cleared it before the snow plough comes along and mashes it to a pulp.’

She gulped down the snippy retort. Of course he wasn’t going to be gracious about it! She was the last person he wanted to turn out to help, but he’d done it anyway, so she swallowed her pride and tried again. ‘Well, whatever, I’m still grateful. I’ll be on my way now—’

He cut her off with a sharp sigh. ‘We’ve just had this conversation, Georgia. You can’t go anywhere. Your car won’t get down the lane. Nothing will. I could hardly pull you out with the Range Rover. What on earth possessed you to try and drive down here in weather like this anyway?’

She blinked and stared at him. ‘I had to. I’m on my way home to my parents for Christmas, and I thought I’d beat the snow, but it came out of nowhere and for the last hour I’ve just been crawling along—’

‘So why come this way? It’s hardly the most sensible route in that little tin can.’

She bristled. Tin can? ‘I wasn’t coming this way but the other road was closed with an accident—d’you know what? Forget it!’ she snapped, losing her temper completely because absolutely the last place in the world she wanted to be snowed in was with this bad-tempered and ungracious reminder of the worst time of her life, and she was seriously leaving now! In her tin can! ‘I’m really sorry I disturbed you, I’ll make sure I never do it again. Just—just go back to your ivory tower and leave me alone and I’ll get out of your hair!’

She tried to get back in the car, desperate to get away before the weather got any worse, but his hand shot out and clamped round her wrist like a vice.

‘Georgia, grow up! No matter how tempted I am to leave you here to work it out for yourself—and believe me, I am very tempted at the moment—I can’t let you both die of your stubborn, stiff-necked stupidity.’

Her eyes widened and she glared at him, trying to wrestle her arm free. ‘Stubborn, stiff-necked—? Well, you can talk! You’re a past master at that! And we’re not going to die. You’re being ridiculously melodramatic. It’s simply not that bad.’

It was his turn to snap then, his temper flayed by that intoxicating scent and the deluge of memories that apparently just wouldn’t be stopped. He tugged her closer, glowering down into her face as the scent assailed him once more.